Perfect 10, Inc. announced that it has filed an action against Microsoft for copyright infringement, relating to Microsoft’s operation of its MSN search engine, after attempts at settlement failed. Perfect 10 is currently in litigation against Google and Amazon for similar claims.

According to Perfect 10, major U.S. corporations like Microsoft and Google are linking to and displaying billions of dollars of copyrighted images without permission, to promote their own businesses.

“Microsoft is showing tens of thousands of extremely valuable celebrity images, along with Perfect 10 images, without authorization, which it obtains from hundreds if not thousands of pirate websites,” says Norm Zada, a former Stanford professor and president of Perfect 10. “They are also showing extremely explicit sexual images to viewers of any age. Search engines could greatly reduce infringement if they would simply delist obvious infringers upon receiving notice, and stop copying and linking to copyrighted works without permission but that would adversely affect their revenue.”

According to Zada, MSN has an image search feature, which like that of Google, makes unauthorized thumbnails of thousands of Perfect 10 images and provides a “See full-size image” link which allows MSN users to see full-size Perfect 10 images for free.